Wednesday, April 01, 2009

This crisis is getting me down! No, I don't mean the economic crisis, I mean the MUSIC crisis! Yeah, jaded-as-a-whore I's gotta admit that there just ain't that much wild and mind-synapse-jarring music out there being released let alone made that I wanna snatch up these days, and even at this very moment I have orders "on hold" at both Forced Exposure and Volcanic Tongue that remain un-sent because frankly, I'm not that excited over laying down the even-harder-to-earn moolah for these particular items at this time. Yeah, there are a few things out there I haven't lent ears to that I'm sure I would get some pleasure outta like the JT IV and Death albums on Drag City, but I just don't feel like stampeding to the mailbox with an order just to get hold of some recordings that will probably only be a once-in-a-blue-moon spin. Let's face it, if you underground record bizzez really want to part this fool with his money, you better dangle some pretty tantalizing carrots in front of my schnozzola like maybe some obscure mid-seventies En Why See proto-punk screech or better yet that Detroit group from 1969 who had a hard enough time gettin' gigs because they sure made the likes of the MC5 and Stooges sound just "too" clean and professional.

Thank goodniz I've latched onto a few new items in order to keep my cranial nodes in proper functioning order, and both of 'em were sent to me by none other than WEASEL WALTER who as you may know has been dabbling in this even newer jazz/no wave thing for quite a longer amt. of time than even my mind can fathom. MYSTERIES BENEATH THE PLANET is the first, a neat li'l gatefold sleeve offering that features the dual drumming team of Marc Edwards and Weasel Walter leading two different aggregations through some pretty hotcha avant jazz spew that ranks with some of the better post-loft scene sounds that I've heard at least back in the early/mid-oh-ohs when I was tuning into the Sunday night freestyle gigs at the CBGB Lounge! I know what you're thinking...that Edwards and Walter are yet another buncha faux jazz personages who have no right to play the music because they don't wear dashikis, but I beg to differ 'n besides they sure were able to get some pretty well-known names in the even newer avant jazz world like Paul Flaherty and Ras Moshe to play with 'em! The results are fine enough to wallow amidst the rest of your pithy avant jazz catalog without looking like imitation flowery jagoff, and if you're looking for yet another good hot and cooking modern-day free jazz session (or rent buster), look no further.

Even creepier down the line is PLANE CRASH, an improvisational album featuring Walter playing along with (at least I'm told he is) legendary jazz guitarist Henry Kaiser and Damon Smith (who plays a newfangled upright seven-string bass!) making some of the more earwiggiest music I've heard from such quarters in quite some time. OK, it's not that I've been actually going out seeking such sounds, but if you're the kinda guy who likes the free splatter that seems to hold no formal links to jazz, rock or even classical you might enjoy listening to these fourteen "attacks" that the three present for you. Even this far down the pike they still have that spark of freshness that I rarely see anywhere these days.

On a sad note, the liner notes written by one Richard Gehr reveal to us that the three musicians who have made this wonderful Cee-Dee had died September 30th of last year in an airplane crash (hence the title) right after producing the recording session which has yielded this particular disque. This is definitely a loss that the free jazz world will never recover from (well, had it ever "really" recovered from the deaths of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler?), but what makes this story even spookier is that I was personally contacted by none other than Mr. Walter via email only a week or so before receiving these two Cee-Dees, and in fact the very package I received only a few days later bore the return address of the now deceased drummer! Talk about mystical connections from the great beyond---this is real BELIEVE IT OR NOT fodder, innit? Gee, the lengths I will go to just to milk a strange enough excuse for liner notes even more just so's I could pad this thing out and make it look more "professional" to the unaided brain, eh?

Henry Kaiser (grandson of the industrialist) is mainly "legendary" because he's been around the West Coast experimental music scene a long time, since the late '70s, and collaborated with Fred Frith and Richard Thompson. He's really nothing that special - one could say he's a Stevie Ray Vaughan to Derek Bailey's Johnny Winter. Didn't know he died. - Michael Snider

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

thanks for the review christopher . . . honestly, i know that kaiser is not everybody's favorite guitar player, but he has done some really great stuff in the past (i'm thinking "invite the spirit", "moose and salmon", "aloha", etc.) and this record is going to totally change the minds of anybody who figured they could just write him off. like somebody like zappa, the output of henry kaiser is so diverse that it's unfair to discount him if you've just heard a few random things.

if you like high-energy freakouts, this is the record for you . . .

re: marc edwards - marc is probably best known for driving cecil taylor's monstrous "dark to themselves" set from 1976. he was also the first main drummer with david s. ware's various groups . . . he is definitely an old school badass if there ever was one.